Hospital leaders can gain many advantages from aggregating financial, clinical and operational data to create dashboards that help them run their CV service line more effectively.

The LUMEDX webinar, "Improving Performance with Clinical Data Integration: How Orlando Health Used Dashboards to Better Manage its CV Service Line," will outline how to achieve these outcomes.

The complimentary webinar will take place Thursday, May 4, at 10 a.m. PT, 12 p.m. CT and 1 p.m. ET.

In this webinar, Rick Jones, RPH, Business Support Manager, Cardiovascular Service, Surgery and Pharmacy, Orlando Health, will outline how this comprehensive private, not-for-profit healthcare network in Florida is integrating data and making it available to decision-makers on a regular, refreshable basis to improve productivity, clinical and financial outcomes.

Registries continue to improve the effectiveness and safety of patient care of heart disease in hospitals throughout the U.S.

A recent report shows registry data is providing unique perspectives into the care and outcomes of heart disease and outlines the strength of national quality programs, like NCDR, in advancing the effectiveness of patient treatments.

The authors examined patient populations, participating centers and patterns of care based on 2014 data from four of the 10 NCDR programs -- CathPCI Registry, ICD Registry, ACTION Registry-GWTG and IMPACT Registry.

"We were able to report on the care and outcomes of patients undergoing common cardiovascular procedures, including percutaneous coronary interventions, implantable defibrillators, and interventions for congenital heart disease as well as for patients with acute heart attacks," NCDR Management Board Chair and lead author of the study Frederick A. Masoudi, MD, MSPH, FACC , said. "In some cases, hospitals are consistently providing excellent care; the registries, however, allow us to identify those aspects of care where the cardiovascular clinical community can improve."

The proliferation of cyberattacks on healthcare providers is well known, with new reports continuing to highlight the problem.

More than 216 hospitals were included in 1,798 breaches between Oct. 21, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2016, according to a report last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Additionally, 33 hospitals, or 15 percent, reported more than one breach. Of the 141 affected acute care hospitals, 52 were major academic medical centers.

Also, about 20,000 patients were affected in 24 of the 216 breached hospitals, and six hospitals had over 60,000 breached patient records.

Another recent report found that ransomware attacks more than quadrupled in 2016, with nearly half happening in the healthcare sector. These types of attacks are projected to double again in 2017, Beazley Breach Insights reported.

Some efforts are underway to form a coordinated response to this problem.

At a hearing last week to address cyberattacks in the healthcare industry, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Terry Rice, VP of IT risk management and CISO at Merck, indicated cybersecurity has become a top concern for healthcare organizations.

While hundreds of millions of health records have been compromised in data breaches in recent years, the extent of the problem may be inadequately reported. “Unfortunately, I believe these incidents underrepresent the risks we are facing as an industry,” Rice said.

To fight cyberattacks, Congress should provide organizations tax breaks for Information Sharing and Analysis Centers, educate the industry on the importance of information sharing, protect data shared through ISACs and advocate for public-private partnerships, Denise Anderson, president of the National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center told the lawmakers.

“It’s become increasingly apparent that the industry needs a government representative who understands cybersecurity issues, threats, vulnerabilities and impacts, as well as the blended threats between physical and cybersecurity,” said Anderson.

At LUMDEX, privacy, security and of course HIPAA-compliance are the essence of our software solutions. We invite you to read our Privacy and Security Policy, our Editorial and Advertising Policy, and our Terms and Conditions of Use. Feel free to browse throughout LUMEDX.com, and please read our Mission Statement in the "About Us" section of LUMEDX.com.

It's becoming increasingly clear that healthcare providers are reaping big dividends from hosting data and services in the cloud.

"Hosting applications in the cloud can help you scale as you grow, collaborate with partners and patients, store and manage huge amounts of patient data and get a bigger return on your IT investments in the long run," Molly True wrote last week in HealthCare Business & Technology

She cited the ability for hospitals to combine a public cloud offering with a private cloud offering where the systems are connected and interoperate with other existing systems. Providers can also keep some of their most sensitive data on their premises and some of their applications.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is following this trend. Last week, it announced plans to increase the adoption rate of cloud services this year from 18.5 percent to 30 percent of its systems.

"We have worked to embrace cloud," HHS Chief Information Officer Beth Killoran said. "If you do cloud properly, the implementation should be transparent to the workforce. When we did our financial systems upgrade last year, we had to provide training on the new capabilities -- not the platform. The effort has been a great success."

Moreover, in a recent survey, prominent healthcare executives predict a drastic shift from on-premise IT infrastructure into the cloud. That includes electronic health records, clinical decision support and analytics.

LUMEDX's HealthView delivers HIPAA-compliant data management and analytics solutions via the cloud, making important data available to your providers-anywhere, anytime-while reducing the time and money you spend on IT infrastructure. To learn more about our various cloud and on-premise options, contact us at info@lumedx.com.

The explosion of available health data is giving organizations the opportunity for the first time to leverage critical data analysis for key services such as financial and clinical decision support management.

The high demand of integrated clinical analytics solutions stems from their dynamic nature and ability for users to extract data from clinical documents synched with the system, such as (electronic health records) EHR, using the data to generate key insights, TMR said.

As a result, this spending makes sense when seen as the means to leverage programs offering actionable insight previously unavailable to healthcare leaders, Stefano Bertozzi, dean and professor of health policy and management at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, said recently in Healthcare IT News.

"But to the extent that we are increasingly able to correct for other factors that create differences, Big Data can reveal what the differences in performance really are," he said. "And, as a result, what are the interventions that are effective for improving the performance."

Electronic Health Records are essential tools for healthcare organizations. But they don't obviate the need for a Cardiovascular Information System (CVIS). In fact, changing payment models, new government mandates, and evolving care practices are making the CVIS more important than ever.

Both the clinical and operational aspects of cardiovascular services are highly complex, and they require a technology solution that can match the complexity of the services themselves. A comprehensive CVIS is specifically designed to collect and manage the vast amount of data required by cardiovascular services, and works in tandem with the EHR by:

Capturing queryable data to enable analytics and support outcomes improvements

Facilitating structured reports

Providing the level of detailed information needed to care for heart patients

Learn why cardiovascular services require dedicated information systems in our white paper, "Bridging the Gaps: A True CVIS and the EHR." This document outlines how the CVIS complements the EHR so cardiovascular services can improve efficiency, reduce costs and deliver best-quality patient care. The paper is the result of communications and observations with current LUMEDX clients, as well as with prospective clients who have completed a deep-dive comparison of our CVIS with their EHR systems.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has pushed back the implementation date for its bundled payments for cardiac care from July 1 until Oct. 1, according to Cardiovascular Business. It also suggested it could further delay the model until Jan. 1, 2018.

CMS announced the delay of the program, titled the Cardiac Rehabilitation Incentive Payment Model, this week in the Federal Register.

The bundled-payment program would allow approximately 1,120 acute care hospitals in 98 designated markets to hold on to the savings they achieve if they spend less than the target price for a 90-day episode of care for bypass and heart attack patients. However, hospitals that exceed the target price must repay Medicare -- and target prices will be determined retrospectively.

CMS previously predicted that the program - which also covers knee and hip replacement - would save the federal government as much as $159 million between now and 2021. In 2014, the CMS said, heart attack treatment for 200,000 patients cost Medicare more than $6 billion.

The new Secretary of Health & Human Services, Tom Price, has been a critic of the program, objecting to the mandatory nature of the initiative. Seema Verma, the new CMS administrator, said during her confirmation hearing in February that she preferred a gradual expansion of new payment models, Cardiovascular Business reported.

The CMS announcement said an additional three-month delay is necessary to allow time for additional review, "to ensure that the agency has adequate time to undertake notice and comment rulemaking to modify the policy if modifications are warranted, and to ensure that in such a case participants have a clear understanding of the governing rules and are not required to take needless compliance steps."

CMS added that participants would have more time to prepare for these models with the delay and that it would be preferable for payment periods to align with the calendar year. As a result, the CMS said, it is seeking comment on delaying the bundles until January 2018.

From one hospital to another, the cost of treating heart attack patients varies by as much as 50 percent. Does your hospital have a plan to meet the target prices for bypass and heart attack patients? LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Performance Program can help. Click here to find out how.

LUMEDX is pleased to announce that we've welcomed another new client to our family: Adventist Health System. The faith-based health system is headquartered in Florida and has 45 hospital campuses with more than 8,300 licensed beds in nine states.

Implementation of LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Information System in the Adventist organization will begin at Florida Hospital Tampa. The next phases of the long-term CVIS project will be implemented at nine Central Florida facilities.

"LUMEDX has been working with Adventist Health System facilities for nearly 20 years, and during that time our partnership has produced a track record of success," says Mickey Norris, vice president and general manager at LUMEDX. "We're extremely proud to help meet Adventist Health System's cardiovascular information needs into the future. Our tools will provide operational, clinical and financial analytics that will allow Adventist Health System to quickly identify best practices in each of its cardiovascular facilities-maximizing efficiencies and minimizing costs."

Join LUMEDX and more than 1,500 registry professionals, quality experts, cardiovascular administrators and physician from across the country at the NCDR Annual Conference next week. LUMEDX will be at Booth 5 -- stop by and say hi!

Set for March 13-15, 2017 in Washington, D.C., the conference will feature pre-conference ACC Accreditation Services Workshops. ACC Accreditation Services (formerly Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care) will offer CathLab and Chest Pain Accreditation Workshops on Sunday and Monday, March 12 and 13, prior to the conference. On Monday, March 13, there will also be NCDR Orientation 101 and LAAO Registry.

Attendees can customize the program to their own educational needs and their role on the quality team, selecting from deep-dive concurrent workshops on:

Registry-specific information

Challenging case studies

Engaging physicians

Engaging physicians

In addition to concurrent workshops and general sessions, the NCDR conference will focus on opportunities to significantly increase knowledge about using data to transform practice. Presentations from national quality leaders will present on topics including:

Insights into the role of registries within national quality improvement effort

New research shows that U.S. hospitals could save $300 million annually--and see fewer complications--if they use transradial access for percutaneous coronary interventions, and release patients on the same day.

Analysis shows that same-day, transradial PCIs cost $3,500 less than discharges that did not occur on the day of the procedure. Compared to transfemoral interventions, transradial PCIs also reduce:

Bleeding

Vascular complications

Transfusions

"We now have identified a mechanism for hospitals to improve their efficiency and lower costs that is associated with improved PCI outcomes simultaneously," says the study's lead author, Amit P. Amin, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in a news release.

"Our data show there is a tremendous potential to reduce costs of PCI, reduce complications and achieve a 'win-win' for both patients and hospitals," Amin adds. "Hospitals that redesign their care pathways to perform more same-day, transradial PCIs can potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year."

As this research indicates, a major part of achieving cost savings is reducing avoidable complications. But reducing PCI complications is just one part of the puzzle; CV service lines can reduce adverse events for a myriad of other procedures.

There are also opportunities to achieve cost savings in other ways, such as by improving throughput and making billing easier and more accurate. Identifying these opportunities is crucial for physicians and cardiovascular leadership.

That's where LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Performance Program comes in. This new program offers a no-charge analysis of your facility's performance on complication rates and other issues that reduce revenues. It then generates a detailed plan for improvement.

The opportunities for better clinical and financial performance are dramatic. Learn more by contacting the Cardiovascular Performance Program team at info@lumedx.com or 800-966-0699.

See you at ACC: If you'll be at ACC.17 this month, stop by and say hi at LUMEDX Booth 2411. Or schedule a meeting to find out about the latest innovative software and services that can help you improve care and dramatically reduce costs across your CV service line.